Sunday, 6 July 2014

THE TALL GUYS

Back in 2001 Sunderland boss Peter Reid seemed to be forever in the market for towering centre forwards...

British football folk once set great store by a forward’s
ability to defy the laws of gravity. A top class targetman of the fifties such
as Tommy Lawton could, apparently, launch himself into the sky like a rocket
and then stay there, returning to earth only when food and Brylcreme supplies
ran low. Later players such as Ian St John perfected the knack of lurking above
the ground until a cross eventually found it’s way to them or they were knocked
unconscious by a passing sputnik. When Denis Law was described as “hovering
around the penalty spot” it was meant quite literally.

One of the game’s greatest soarers was Wyn Davies, once
memorable described in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle as “The Magpies’ leaping
Welsh dragon”. On a video dedicated to St James’s Park centre forwards, “The
Magnificent Number Nines” one of Davies’ former team-mates, Scottish
centre-back Bobby Moncur tells how in training he would jump for the ball with
the Welshman. Defender and attacker rose together but as the Scot began to descend
he would look up and there would be Davies loitering casually at the apex of
his leap. “He was just hanging there in the air,” a still amazed Moncur
announces to viewers.

You might be tempted to imagine that such an astonishing
thing could only possibly result from the use of banned substances. But that
would be an outrageous libel against Bobby Moncur.

The current Anderlecht forward, Jan Koller, is able to hang
in the air simply by standing upright. Perhaps that is why the 6’7” Czech
Republic international is attracting such interest in England. (Not that
continental teams are averse to employing large forwards. The Champions’ League
final will feature Valencia’s mighty Norwegian obelisk John Carew and Carsten
Janker of Bayern Munich, a player whose ability to contribute in the
quarter-final at Old Trafford was clearly compromised by the ban on the
movement of livestock).The big man from
Smetanova Lhota has been linked with Chelsea, Manchester City, Aston Villa, and
Sunderland.

Koller is a skilful player, but his sheer size may lead to
him being typecast. There is after all no reason why somebody who is tall
should necessarily be good in the air. I know this from personal experience.
Despite being 6’ 5” tall I think it is fair to say that during my playing days
I carried all the aerial threat of a lugworm. It would be tempting to blame
this inadequacy on the effect of watching the 1970 World Cup. It will be
remembered that during that tournament the winners Brazil fielded a centre forward,
the sublimely talented Lee Harvey Oswald look-alike Tostao, who was forbidden
from heading the ball by medical experts. Clearly this wasn’t reassuring for a
watching ten year old, although in truth the realization that being struck on
the forehead by a leather ball actually hurt probably did me more long-term
psychological damage.

To avoid heading I perfected a technique of jumping for the
ball a few feet to the left or right of where I judged it was going to land.
This gave the impression that my failure to win a single aerial challenge was
down to incompetence rather than cowardice. I honed this skill until it was
practically an art form. Indeed for decades I thought I was the world’s leading
practitioner. Then I saw Mikkel Beck play.

As well as targeting Koller, Sunderland boss Peter Reid is
also, it is said, keen on QPR’s six-and-a-half footer Peter Crouch. He already
has Niall Quinn and Daniel Dicchio, combined height a smidgeon shy of thirteen
feet, at his disposal. Not since the days when the publishing magnate Lord
Northcliffe responded to a fall in circulation at one of his newspapers by
ordering the staff to line up in order of size and then appointing the tallest
as editor has anyone shown quite such faith in the power of height.

Most observers suggest that one of these transfer targets is
being lined up to replace the ageing Quinn. It’s my belief, however, that the
gigantophile Reid is actually going to ditch the diminutive Kevin Phillips in
favour of a massive attack of Quinn, Dichio and Crouch or Koller (or possibly
both).

Since Reid is one of the craftiest managers around I believe
he will use this formation to confuse the opposition. “So when we get the ball
do we just lump it forward for the big men?” Sunderland skipper Michael Gray
will ask before the opening match. “No Micky,” Reid will respond, with a
cunning grin, “that’s just what the enemy will be expecting us to do….”

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About the Blogger

Harry Pearson is the author of The Far Corner and nine other works of non-fiction, including Slipless in Settle - winner of the 2011 MCC/Cricket Society Prize. From 1997 through to 2012 he wrote over 700 columns for the Guardian sports section. He has worked for When Saturday Comes since 1988.

About This Blog

When The Far Corner came out a well known football writer whose work I like and respect told me he been unable to finish it. Too much non-League. Too many howls of outrage in the lumpy rain of steeltown winters. Not enough rapture. ‘I’m only interested in the great stars, the great occasions,’ he said, ‘To me football is like opera.’

I don’t care much for opera. And so I have carried on much as I did before: writing about unsung people in rough places where the PA plays 'Sex on the Beach' in the coal-scented February fog and men with ill-advised hair bellow, 'Christ on a bike, this is the drizzling shits.'I could justify this with grandiosity. I could say Dickens and Balzac, Orwell and Zola were more interested in the lower divisions of society than its elite. I could tell you that the sportswriters I most admire are almost all Americans whose primary subject is boxing. AJ Liebling, WC Heinz, Thomas Hauser, Phil Berger and the rest inhabit a world where hucksters, gangsters, the desperate, the doomed and the mad hang out in stinking gyms and amidst the rattle of slot machines, and trainers such as Roger Mayweather say things like, "You don't need no strategy to fight Arturo Gatti. Close your eyes, throw your hands and you'll hit him in the fucking face."

But that is to be wise after the event. Norman Mailer said every writer writes what he can. It is not a choice. We play the cards we're dealt.

A few years ago I stood in a social club kitchen near Ashington listening to an old bloke named Bill talk about a time in the early 1950s when, on a windswept field at East Hirst, beneath anthracite sky, he’d watched a skinny blond teenager ‘float over that mud like a little angel’, glowing at the memory of Bobby Charlton.

Opera is pantomime for histrionic show offs, but this? This is true romance.

The First 30 Years features some new writing and lots of older pieces going back to the late-1980s. This work first appeared in When Saturday Comes, The Guardian, various other newspapers, fanzines and a number of those glossy men's lifestyle magazines that have women in bras on the cover. It is my intention over the next year or so to collect it all here, if for no other reason than to prove to my family that I did do some work every once in a while.

In keeping with the original rhythms of the game I'll post a new piece every Saturday (kick-off times may vary)

The best images here have been provided by a trio of the great photographers I've been lucky enough to work with over the years. I'm very grateful to Tim Hetherington, Colin McPherson, and Peter Robinson for letting me use their work - all of which is copyright of those individuals and cannot be reproduced without their permission.